Costume Feature

A few weeks ago, Joel contacted me about possibly shooting my products on Super8 film. With my previous experience of transferring old films including 8mm and 16mm to digital, I was so excited to have this opportunity! This was such a fun film to make! My products plus Joel’s Super8 camera in a gorgeous garden in Austin, Texas. Featured items include Nephele Steampunk Boots, Pirate Hair Jewels, Steel boned Corsets, Linen Renaissance Skirts, Pixie Skirt, Emily Elaine Lace Capelet.

My hat was a custom creation by GypsyLadyHats, and no, it’s not for sale. 🙂

For the Cap’n’s new hat, Eric ordered a black felted wool hat blank. When it came in, I got to take him shopping for the decorations to be added! After purchasing a ridiculous amount of feathers and some trim that would match his vest, we spent a few hours putting these together and onto the hat.

Eric worked on the trims, while I dealt with the feathers. The top of the brim has a burgundy braided trim attached with fabric glue, while the bottom of the brim has two black braided trims glued side by side. After the trims were set, he stitched the right side of the brim up to give it a cavalier look. Meanwhile, I hot glued the base of the feathers together to make sure none of them could fall out when worn.

Remember that vest that I made in July for a sword fighting event? Probably not, because the memory card with pictures I took once it was finished disappeared before I could copy the files to my computer. Yesterday that memory card finally made itself known to the world, and I get to share the vest I made! …not that you can actually see that much of it.

For International Talk Like a Pirate Day, the Austin location of Dragon’s Lair held a pirate costume contest. The Cap’n and I of course went and entered! We were the first two entrants, and only one other lass appeared for the contest that day.

So I’ve mentioned that I got my degree in photography, yes? I haven’t exactly gotten a steady job with it yet, but hopefully that will change soon. In the meantime, doing photo shoots, especially when they’re costumed photo shoots, is a great way that I can use the skills I learned and my parents payed ridiculous amounts of money for.

A few days ago, I took photos of Marianne in her Seras Victoria cosplay in its original yellow! She’s spent the time since the shoot to bloodstain it with dye, not actual blood, before an Anime convention this weekend. I took her to a park near my apartment that we’ve shot some of the Mini Cloak photos at and had a bunch of fun doing several poses. If you’d like a better look at the images, just click on them to see them and more from our shoot at my DeviantArt account!

I’ve been working on making and putting together a Steampunk outfit for myself for a while. It’s taking a while, but I’m finally getting a significant amount of it done! I haven’t quite pinned down how I’m going to incorporate photography into my outfit, but I think I have a few ideas.

Here’s a sketch of the major items I want to pull together for my outfit. I’ve made the skirts, purchased the shirt and corset, and plan on making the jacket in the near future. The hat and goggles will have to wait until I can save up some more!

The skirts I’ve made from McCall’s pattern M4090. A warning to anyone considering using this pattern: it really does run true to the measurements on the back! I made my skirts too small for myself because I bought the smallest pattern without paying attention to the measurements. o_o; Thankfully if I wear a corset, it’s not so bad. The lower skirt is black cotton look-a-like linen, the top skirt is made from brown linen with two hike straps.

The shirt I purchased from Retroscope Fashions, removed the buttons and replaced them with pewter buttons.

The corset I purchased from Heavy Red. It’s something I’d wanted for a long time, and came very close to not being able to get. I think I got the last one in my size from their site!

The hat I would like to get is made by Gypsy Lady Hats. I’m hoping to have one custom made with a mix of both brown as the main color and black as the accent color. The goggles I want come from Dark Wear. If I want to stick to my photographer outfit, I really don’t need the goggles, but if I were to live this kind of character, I would want to ride a motorcycle.

Of course, I really want a camera that goes with all of this… and I have one in mind. But I won’t be linking to it because finding it was ridiculously hard, and I don’t want it to disappear again! It is a beautiful wood and brass 4 x 5 camera that I would take tintype photographs with.

Yes, I have a Zombie Hunter outfit. It was created due to a possible zombie infestation at my workplace, and someone needed to be prepared! Sadly no zombies appeared that day, but I did win a CD for my outfit!